Celebrating its 175th anniversary, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints held a celebration in Utah at the 11,000-seat Dee Events Center basketball arean at Weber State University. With a cast of more than 2,200 performing in-the-round on the arena floor, the challenge for sound system provider Webb Audio Visual (Salt Lake City) was to mount a system that could provide full, high-fidelity coverage to every seat without spilling onto the stage area and causing feedback issues.
Webb A/V’s Scott Webb cross-rented a Meyer Sound MILO high-power curvilinear array system from Audio West (Yorba Linda, Calif.). “Literally, the entire floor of the arena was the stage,” Webb says, “and we couldn’t have any feedback. With the MILO system and the way the [coverage] drop-off works, we were able to cover every single seat from the top [of the arena] down to the front row, with nothing pointing at the floor.”
Technical director Don Wilhelm comments, “The first time I heard a Meyer Sound system was at a Gordon Lightfoot show, and the sound was just phenomenal. Then I read an article about how Meyer Sound was used for the Broadway production of the musical Wicked. I happened to be going to New York, so I made it a point to see the show, and it was the same thing: just great sound. I really became a fan. So when Scott Webb told me we would have a MILO system for this show, I was excited.”
The main system comprised 24 MILO family loudspeakers. Four arrays, each comprising five MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers and one MILO 120 expanded-coverage high-power curvilinear array loudspeaker, were hung from a 30×30-foot truss rigged around the scoreboard. Low end was provided by four groundstacked 700-HP ultrahigh-power subwoofers on the arena floor, while system drive needs were met by an LD-3 compensating line driver. The system was tuned using a SIM 3 audio analyzer.
Webb had asked Meyer Sound to help him design the system, and the company’s design services and technical support groups responded with a design generated using the company’s MAPP Online Pro™ acoustical prediction software. “Between the MAPP program and the QuickFly® rigging hardware, this system is a real time-saver,” Webb remarks. “We flew those 24 speakers using just two people. They just went from stack to stack, lifted them up and connected them really easily. Then they simply splayed them as they needed to be. It was very simple and quick.”
For more information, visit Meyer Sound online at www.meyersound.com. For more information on Webb Audio Visual, visit www.webbav.com.
